Transforming Surplus Food

Drexel University’s Food Transformation Initiative creates nutritional dishes with food that is not attractive to retail grocery customers. The ingredients used would otherwise end up in landfills, increasing pollution and wasting good food. Each dish is created using a few simple ingredients with the hope that soup kitchens and those living in poverty can use the recipes.

Jonathan Deutsch, Director of the Center for Culinary Arts and Sports Management and Professor of Culinary Arts and Food Science at Drexel University, acknowledges just how severe the problem of food waste in America has become. His students partnered with the United States EPA to create a program that will encourage the use of currently wasted surplus food.

The Drexel University Food Lab has partnered with Brown’s ShopRite supermarket to find a use for surplus food from grocery stores. Culinary arts students travel to ShopRite at least once a week to collect food that has been culled from the store shelves. Although aesthetically these food items would not sell to consumers because of a bump or bruise, they are still consumable. The students then work to create simple recipes using the culled food. Finally, they distribute the food and recipes to soup kitchens and shelters in Philadelphia.